Steve Stockman subject of Ethics Committee inquiry

Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Clear Lake, is the subject of an inquiry by the House Ethics Committee, which is looking into the Congressman’s campaign finances, a Stockman spokesman acknowledged Friday.

The Chronicle reported last year that two Stockman staffers were fired in October for making prohibited contributions to the campaign last year. Stockman spokesman Donny Ferguson told the Chronicle then that Jason Posey and Thomas Dodd had been terminated from Stockman’s House office.

Posey had worked with Stockman since the mid-1990s, and was his 2013 campaign treasurer. In April 2013, he filed a report to the FEC that falsely attributed three donations totaling $7,500 to a relative, Donnie Posey, in Mississippi, and another three, also totaling $7,500, to Dodd’s mother.

Then, in October, Posey filed an amended report disclosing that he and Dodd actually had made the contributions originally attributed to their respective relatives, FEC records show.

In that report, Posey explained that the six contributions were wrongly “attributed to family member(s) as a result of miscommunication with accounting about joint charitable donations and other family/personal funds.” Three days later, Posey reported that the contributions from him and Dodd “have been refunded in full as the corrections may have deemed them not permissible.”

Posey was replaced as treasurer of the troubled campaign committee in January. Stockman, in December, announced he would not seek reelection in the Texas 36th Congressional District and would instead challenge Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary, a bid he lost in March.

“The Federal Election Commission reporting error was committed more than a year ago by an accountant who was a campaign volunteer,” Ferguson said in a statement released Friday. “Rep. Stockman caused the mistake to be corrected more than six months ago, less than a week after he became aware of it. The accountant responsible for the mistake was removed from his position and the campaign committee has since been closed.”

Stockman attempted to downplay the inquiry in the statement.

“My office is aware of and is cooperating fully with the Ethics Committee’s preliminary inquiry into an FEC reporting error,” he said. “I thus join 34 of my colleagues who have also been the subject of an Office of Congressional Ethics review in the 113th Congress, and am confident the Ethics Committee will ultimately dismiss the matter after it completes a careful review.”

While Stockman may join 34 other members of Congress who have been the subject of OCE review, only 11—including Stockman—have been referred to the Ethics Committee for review in the 113th Congress, according to data released by the OCE this week.

An OCE referral to the Ethics Committee does not determine that a violation of ethics rules has occurred, and only the Ethics Committee has the authority to determine what a sanction, if any, may be.

In addition to the prohibited contributions, the Chronicle has reported on Stockman’s campaign finance history dating back to the 1990s, Posey’s ties to several nonprofit corporations and issues with Stockman’s financial disclosure in the House.

The Chronicle stories:

• Showed that the Clear Lake Republican’s House campaign has been notified by the federal Election Commission of dozens of potential problems with its filings in 2012 and 2013, including the misreported donations and late or missing filings of required reports.

• Revealed that Stockman’s personal financial disclosure to the House Ethics Committee was filed nearly a year late, and failed to disclose some assets and business affiliations, as required by federal law. The disclosure also failed to fully identify the source of $350,000 in income that Stockman claimed in 2011 and 2012.

Ferguson did not immediately respond to additional questions sent by email Friday afternoon.